ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a global update on unconventional gas mining, an activity (along with the associated techniques of fracking and horizontal drilling) that has divided communities and countries. It demonstrates that unconventional gas mining activities are widespread – extending from Africa to Europe, Australia and the Americas – but simultaneously uneven being affected by different geological conditions, different legal and governance tools, variations in the skill and experience of participants as well as different political and socio-cultural climates. Nevertheless, the chapter argues that the potential reach of any deleterious impacts of unconventional gas mining is vast. It also argues that analysing unconventional gas mining activities through a frame that favours a continual growth economy driven by consumption encourages the employment of certain legal and governance tools. Those tools include private property and market mechanisms. However, if an ecological integrity framework is employed, different legal and governance tools are likely to come to the fore. Those tools include public trusteeship and the common heritage of humankind. Where those concepts are relied upon as legal and governance tools we are more likely to see governments shift from being supporters of unconventional gas mining activities to being resisters of them.
